Free XML sitemap checker
Enter a domain and this tool finds its sitemap the way a search engine would — robots.txt first, then the conventional paths — parses the XML, counts the URLs and tells you whether robots.txt actually declares it.
How the sitemap is found
The tool looks in the same order a crawler does. First it reads robots.txt and follows any Sitemap: line, because that is the declared location and the only one guaranteed to be correct. If there is no declaration it tries the conventional paths — /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, /sitemap-index.xml.
The distinction is reported because it is a real difference in strength. Found-by-declaration means search engines are told where the file is. Found-by-convention means they will probably guess right. If your sitemap lives anywhere unusual and robots.txt does not name it, it may as well not exist.
The failure nobody notices
A great many sites answer /sitemap.xml with their HTML 404 page at status 200. Nothing looks broken: the URL loads, the server says OK. But a crawler receives HTML where XML should be and gets nothing usable from it, and no error surfaces anywhere you would look. This tool checks that the response actually parses as XML rather than trusting the status code.
The related trap is the stale sitemap — a file generated once, still served happily, listing URLs that were deleted two redesigns ago. Every entry that 404s is a URL you have explicitly asked Google to crawl and be disappointed by.
A sitemap is discovery, not indexing
Being in the sitemap does not make a page rank, and it does not guarantee indexing. It shortens the time between publishing and being found, which is worth having and is all it does. If a page is in the sitemap and still missing from search, the cause is somewhere else — check whether it is indexable at all, and whether robots.txt is blocking it.
For the whole picture in one pass, the free website audit checks the sitemap alongside crawl access, metadata, speed, Core Web Vitals and AI search visibility, then scores what it finds.
Sitemap questions
- What is an XML sitemap?
- An XML sitemap is a file listing the URLs on a site that you want search engines to know about. It does not force anything to be indexed — it is a hint that speeds up discovery, which matters most for large sites, new sites, and pages that few other pages link to.
- Where should a sitemap be located?
- The convention is /sitemap.xml at the root of the domain, and search engines look there first. The location only truly matters if you declare it with a Sitemap: line in robots.txt, which is how a crawler is told about a sitemap at any other path.
- How many URLs can a sitemap contain?
- The sitemap protocol caps a single file at 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Past that you split the URLs across several sitemaps and list those files in a sitemap index. Exceeding the cap is a hard failure — the file is rejected rather than truncated.
- Do I need to submit my sitemap to Google?
- Not strictly. Google finds sitemaps through robots.txt. Submitting in Search Console is still worth doing, because the sitemaps report then shows you how many of the submitted URLs were actually indexed, which is information you cannot get any other way.
- What is a sitemap index file?
- A sitemap index is a sitemap that lists other sitemaps instead of pages. It uses a <sitemapindex> root element rather than <urlset>. Large sites use one to stay under the 50,000-URL limit per file. This tool detects an index and reports the child sitemaps it points to.
- Should every page be in the sitemap?
- Only pages you want indexed. Including a page that returns 404, redirects, or carries a noindex tag sends a contradictory signal — you are asking for something to be indexed while telling Google not to index it. Tag pages, filtered listings and thin archive pages are usually better left out.
- Why is my sitemap not being indexed by Google?
- Submitting a sitemap asks Google to discover your URLs, but it never guarantees indexing — Google still decides page by page whether each URL is worth including. If listed pages are not being indexed, check that they are not blocked by robots.txt, carry no noindex tag, and offer unique, useful content rather than assuming the sitemap is at fault.
- How do I create an XML sitemap?
- Most content platforms generate an XML sitemap automatically — WordPress does through plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math, and many frameworks build one at deploy time. If you hand-build one, list each canonical URL inside <url><loc> tags, save it as XML, and reference it from your robots.txt so crawlers can find it.
- What is the difference between an XML sitemap and an HTML sitemap?
- An XML sitemap is a machine-readable file that lists URLs for search engines, while an HTML sitemap is a page of links built for human visitors to navigate the site. They serve different audiences, and a well-structured site with good internal linking often needs only the XML version.
- Should I include noindex pages in my sitemap?
- No — a sitemap should list only the canonical pages you want indexed, so including noindex URLs sends Google a contradictory signal. Leave out anything blocked, redirected, non-canonical or marked noindex, because a clean sitemap helps Google trust the URLs it does contain.
- How often should I update my sitemap?
- A sitemap should update whenever you add, remove or substantially change pages, which is why an automatically generated one is worth having. There is no benefit to editing it on a schedule if nothing has changed — Google recrawls it as needed and ignores fake or inflated lastmod dates.